In recent years, with decreases of the prices of record mediums such as CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) and DVD-RW (Digital Versatile Disc-ReWritable) that allow data to be repeatedly written and erased, they have been widespread.
On these disc-shaped-record mediums, predetermined data can be randomly accessed. Video data and audio data can be written as contents on these record mediums and contents can be erased therefrom. Information of many contents written to record mediums is totally managed with a content management file or the like.
With a content management table, attribute information composed of for example pointers that represent the recorded positions of contents, recorded date and time, changed date and time, protect information, thumbnails (images) of the contents, and text information such as title names of the contents are managed.
Thus, when a content is reproduced from a record medium, data of a content are accessed according to the position of the pointer to “content” of the content management table. Reproduction information (for example, the type of codec of data that composes the content, the resolution of data, and so forth) with which the content is reproduced from whole or a part of data is obtained from the data of the content. According to the obtained reproduction information, data are reproduced.
However, when reproduction information with which a content is reproduced is obtained from data, it takes a time to obtain the reproduction information for example it takes a time to interpret the data. Thus, data of a content to be reproduced may not be reproduced at the reproduction time.
When all contents recorded on the record medium are successively and smoothly reproduced, after data are reproduced from a particular position, it is necessary to obtain reproduction information from the next data recorded in an area apart from the particular position. In this case, when the reproduction target that the reproduction apparatus reproduces is moved from a particular area to the other area, a seek will take place.
When the seek time necessary to perform the seek is long, since not only the seek time, but time for obtaining the reproduction time from the data is required, data of a content to be reproduced next cannot be read at the reproduction time. Thus, the reproduction will stops. In other words, it was difficult to continuously and smoothly reproduce data of a plurality of contents.